International News

UNITED NATIONS, United States, July 19, (APP/AFP) –
UN experts say they are not ruling out the possible involvement of Democratic Republic of Congo state security forces in the murder of two of their colleagues.
In a confidential report seen by AFP on Tuesday, the group of experts
says it has conducted preliminary analysis of phone records, a video and interviews on the March 12 murder of American Michael Sharp and Swedish-Chilean Zaida Catalan.
“The preliminary evidence does not yet allow the group to attribute
responsibility for the murder,” reads the report by the experts to the Security Council.
“However, the available evidence does not preclude the involvement of
different actors, such as pro- or anti-government Kamwina Nsapu factions, other armed groups as well as members of state security services.”
The bodies of Sharp, the group’s coordinator and arms expert, and
Catalan, a humanitarian expert, were found in a shallow grave by peacekeepers weeks after they disappeared. Catalan had been decapitated.
The report sent to the council in late June says the two experts were
“executed by a heteroclite group of individuals not yet identified at the time of writing.”
But it goes on to describe the murder as a “premeditated setup” after
the pair set out on a field investigation from Kananga on March 12.
On the eve of the field trip, the pair spoke to members of the clan
leader’s family, according to an audio tape of the meeting obtained by the
group.